“Señor, we have the name and address of the third thief and right now my men are staking out his apartment. As soon as he returns, I can guarantee we will find your box. It has to be in his share of the haul.”

“What do you mean returns? Where the fuck is he?”

Paz moved the phone away from his ear as he felt the sheer force of Franklin’s unbridled anger. “We don’t yet know, but we believe he’ll be back sometime soon.”

“Have you got any other bad news for me?”

Paz thought about his mobile, which he guessed was now in the hands of the police. “No, Señor. Everything else is good.”

He glared at the unsecure burner phone he was now forced to use and sat for a moment reflecting on the raging hatred he felt towards Franklin – the only figure in his life who wielded total power over him. He knew it was an inevitable consequence of doing a deal with the devil. Then a subconscious switch in his brain automatically flicked into action and his thoughts turned towards Tomás. He wondered if the boy was available, and, a few moments later, he reached for the phone and began typing an email to the Eros agency.

Chapter Seventeen

12 January 2012

Buenos Aires

Vargas was back in his office, discussing the latest developments with Torres. They had passed the mobile to their IT specialists, whose initial diagnosis had not been encouraging. It appeared this was not a regular iPhone. It was encrypted with an inbuilt firewall that required a set of passwords to open it up.

“Juan, we’ve had four executions in the last twenty-four hours and we badly need a break if we are going to prevent a fifth. We’ve got to find out who the third man is. And pronto.”

“I’m backing our tech boys to break into the mobile and then at least we might find out who we are up against.”

“What about prints?”

“A lovely clear set, chief, but no match on our servers.”

Vargas moved towards the office door. “It’s time to rally the troops.”

Flanked by Torres, he made his way through to the open-plan area where the bulk of the detective team were based. He stood in front of the main crime board and addressed his men.

“Listen up, everyone. If we are lucky, we’ve maybe got a few hours before the third of our thieves is tortured and executed. Everyone needs to step up to the plate. Keep looking for a common denominator between Gonzales and Ramos that might help us identify our man.”

Vargas turned to walk back to his office, signalling to Torres to follow him, when Detective Alex Martin stood up from his desk.

“Sir, I think I may have something.”